If the lengths of all the blood vessels in the body were added together, how long would the total come to ? How much "active ingredient" is contained in a standard pill that's popped into your mouth ? How long would it take a blood cell to be pumped from the high pressure outlet of the heart to your toes ? Any thoughts anyone ? http://perendis.webs.com

Question

osprey · Answer

True or false ?
The words "vaccine" and "to vaccinate" come from the Latin (Italian) word "Vax, vaccus" meaning a cow. 
To vaccinate someone against smallpox, they are injected with a dose of cowpox, because people had cowpox (dairy farm workers) seemed to be immune to smallpox.

mangotangochick · Answer

Took a while to find your question xD
According to google, length of all blood vessels: 60,000 miles
Active ingredient depends on the type of pill you're talking about - it varies
It takes about a minute to pump blood around your body - so probably half a minute to get it to go to your toes.

And the second is true, Edward Jenner is credited for vaccination (cowpox and smallpox are very similar - cowpox is essentially a weaker, less active dose of smallpox), though I believe other scientists were carrying out experiments at the same time somewhere in Russia...

osprey · Answer

60, 000 miles !!!! absolutely astonishing !

osprey · Answer

Active ingredients ... the only pill that springs to mind has the trade name "paracetamol". I don't know what the active chemicals are, but I wonder if there's a sort of carrier substrate. Maybe a bit like buttered toast. A lot more bread as a carrier substrate than butter as the thing to make it palatable ?